She Moves with the Sea
by Void
Summary: Companion to "Dreams of the Dragon King." Katara POV. What it's like to love a man who's struggling under the weight. (Final update! Story is complete.)
1. Chapter 1

A water tribe woman is not supposed to leave her home. Katara's grandmother crossed the world ocean to make a new home for herself, and Katara did not think twice about following after a boy she believed would save the world.

Those were days of upheaval and war. Katara thought that she herself would make things normal - she would be the mother to their group, she would create their home on the back of a flying bison or wherever they happened to land, and in time she would be Aang's wife. Now the world is returning to a normal that Katara does not recognize. The normal life that she thought she wanted was the fantasy of a little girl who died long ago.


	2. Chapter 2

It amazes Katara that Toph has found her place in the world after the war, her place as an adult, so easily and so well. Toph had had to break out of the confines of her childhood and now she is as confident and powerful as... as Aang, in her own way. Everything from running one of the largest trading empires in the Earth Kingdom to finding a husband and raising children, everything seems to come easily to her.

It is as if the war cleared the ground for Toph. She was able to lay down her roots, and she is flourishing.

Katara finds herself thinking of Suki as her travels take her from shore to shore. Suki was a warrior but now the war is gone. There is something in her gaze, something in the small wrinkles that furrow her brow. Suki is missing something, and it isn't Sokka. Although what they had between them isn't over, it hasn't been strong enough to pull Sokka out of the south pole or Suki out of her home.

Just so, Katara feels like she is drifting. She had been the one holding everything together but now their group has grown apart. Katara isn't in the center anymore. Instead she just goes where Aang goes.

There is work to be done, work she cares about, but there is still something missing, and she wonders if she'll ever find it, if she'll ever live her life so intensely again.


	3. Chapter 3

Their travels take them to the Fire Nation, of course. As much destruction as the Fire Nation wrought, the Fire Nation itself must be retrained, remade. The hardest battles of peace will be fought here.

And there is Zuko. Of all of them who made it through the war, Zuko has changed the least. He is just as single-mindedly obsessed as ever, but now his obsession is the whole of his nation. Katara can see that it wears on him. Before he had his uncle to help him but now he is alone.

His face holds a blank scowl, as always, and his eyes follow her as they always did, and just as she always has, Katara feels it like the heat from a flame on her skin.

It's silly, this tension between them, and Katara is annoyed and almost embarrassed with herself and with him for still feeling it.

It used to confuse her, but now that she's older she knows exactly what it is.

It's a meaningless distraction.

It's only lust.


	4. Chapter 4

Aang is safe. Aang has always been safe. When Katara began to feel the tides within her blood and the heat within her body, of course she felt attracted to older boys, dangerous boys, but she knew that she could take things slow with Aang.

Aang would never try to trick her or seduce her. Aang would guard her body and preserve her heart and Katara's own mind would be in control.

And eventually, inevitably, she and Aang grew up. When she was ready, he was waiting, all patience and kindness and strength and self-control.


	5. Chapter 5

Katara was the mother that Aang never had, and then she was his best friend, and then his lover. It follows, then, that he would want her to be mother to his children. To all of his children.

Aang is the Avatar, and he is the last air bender left. Of course he can't limit himself to just one woman. It almost makes sense, when she thinks about it as if it were happening to someone else.

At first it made her sick; it made her boil over with jealousy. She wouldn't stand for it. She couldn't.

And so they fought and they fought and finally she left him.

And Aang didn't change, mild and peaceful and certain that he was right. And Katara found that he was still the center of her world.

Now she finds that the idea of Aang having sex with other women doesn't even bother her too much. It's not like he loves them, no more than he loves everyone. Katara is the most special person to him, and that will never change.

It doesn't bother her that Aang already has children and will have more children. Really, they are all Aang's children, those who arrive in the rebuilt shrines. Some are his by seed and by blood, some are simply children of the shrine, and many of them come to him as orphans of war.

It doesn't matter to the Air Nomads, because Air Nomads keep no mother and no father. They own no property and they love all children as their own. Once obliterated by the Fire Nation, they have sprung back from nothing, and the shrines accept all comers.

Katara cares for the Air Nomads, certainly. She cares for the orphans. She tolerates the acolytes. She has no doubt that more and more air benders will be born or will discover their talents.

Katara is glad that Aang's culture has returned. She is glad for him.

But the thought of turning over her own children...

When Katara thinks of childhood she remembers long, dark nights and close fires and mother and father, grandmother, brother. Home is family, and family is trust and protection that you rely on for your life because the cold can kill.

Air nomad children learn to love the wind.


	6. Chapter 6

When she and Aang make love, in a way they are connecting with the entire universe, every pulse and every breath and every growing thing.

Aang has taught Katara how to breathe so that she feels peaceful and powerful and transcendent. Aang is able to find the energy that builds in the core of her being and hold it there, tend it there, observe it there.

Sometimes Katara feels like she is flying and sometimes it turns into vertigo. It's like being suspended in the air. Aang must exalt in this feeling but sometimes it throws Katara into a dizzy, nauseated panic.

Afterwards she focuses on the physicality of her body. She finds the blood in branching tendrils flowing through her womb and she holds it there.

Aang does not ask her why she isn't ready to have children.


	7. Chapter 7

Katara's power ebbs and flows within her. Sometimes it throbs in her veins. She can dance with the waves. She can pull a torrent out of the ocean. She can turn water to ice and flesh to dry grass.

Pushing, moving, killing, it all comes easily to Katara.

She can also heal, but healing is a more delicate art. The finer methods require careful concentration, and Katara has always been an impatient person.

But in this time of peace she must know more than how to fight and how to kill and how to stitch together rough battle wounds with a sack of stale water.

And so she travels to the north and she studies.

And then because she cannot abide to be in the north for long, suffocating under their customs and their rules, as splendid as it is to be surrounded by thriving water culture, she travels to the east and to the west and to the south.

Katara learns that the Earth Kingdom heals with potions, concoctions of herbs, and pastes of clay.

Unsurprisingly, she finds that the Air Nomads believe first and foremost in listening to their bodies and breathing deeply of fresh air. A bracing, brisk wind can help make you strong; that's what they believe.

And in the Fire Nation... Katara has seen Fire Nation physicians push small, sharp needles into a sick man's skin. She has seen them breathe flame into a cup that is then placed on the back. The fire burns away the air and so the flesh itself is drawn into the cup. It leaves an ugly bruise. She has seen them draw a sharp knife to spill blood. Too much liquid in the body, not enough flame.

In the Fire Nation, even their healing brings pain.


	8. Chapter 8

Katara and Zuko find each other in the courtyards. She doesn't know how it happens, if he's having her watched or if she's intruded upon his private space, but more often than not when she is in the palace, taking her rest beside whatever fountain or pond she can find, he will appear.

It should disturb her. With everything that ever passed between them, her trust and his betrayal and the long struggle it took for her to even be able to tolerate his presence... It should bring up some sort of conflict between them, but instead they just share the quiet.

Zuko does not speak, and neither does Katara. A truce, perhaps. A treaty. Katara trusts him now. Ever since the last battle, when he helped to ensure his own father's defeat and he fought his own sister to her death and Katara saw how much it hurt him when Azula gasped that last breath... She trusts him.

Strange, then, that in this silence Katara finds herself remembering Ba Sing Se. Now Zuko watches her with a man's eyes and he wears his loneliness and his worry like a raw wound across his face. But Katara carries no more spirit water in a vial over her heart. There is nothing she can offer him that would ease his burdens.

Zuko does not speak, and neither does Katara.


	9. Chapter 9

A water tribe woman is not supposed to leave her home. This is the tradition, and in the north they cling to their traditions like ice clings to ice layer upon layer until it is harder than granite.

Katara has failed to persuade any of the great healers in the north to travel to other lands. Instead they have agreed to train a few men in the most rudimentary forms of their art. These expendable men may travel. The women and their secrets must stay close and guarded.

Katara doesn't argue anymore. She doesn't have the patience to try to change people's minds. That's Aang's job. Instead she just works with what she has.

The earth kingdom wisdom mingles easily with that of the water tribe. Katara has even recruited some water benders out of the swamps to learn with her and to travel. The Air Nomads are largely indifferent to the healing arts, but in the Fire Nation the physicians are both fascinated and hostile.

So Katara leaves the capital. She goes to the farms and to the villages and she shows the people what the healing arts can do.

Zuko should be here, but it's an odd thought. Zuko stays within his palace like a spider, brooding, or more likely he is the firefly caught in the web.

Zuko should be able to travel like this. Zuko should be able to use his bending for more than keeping his candles burning and his throne alight.

But it's an odd thought. Zuko is trapped beneath his crown. Katara can't change that. No one can change that.

All she can do is relish her freedom.


	10. Chapter 10

She doesn't go home very often. The village may be growing with more returning tribesmen bringing more and more wives, but it is still a small village. Even among other outsiders, Katara herself is strange. She is the only unmarried woman, she is the daughter of the chief, and of course she is the companion of the Avatar. Katara left home, and no matter how many times she returns, she will never fit in as she did. But then perhaps that's true of her entire tribe.

Katara finds herself wandering alone. For days and then weeks, farther and farther away from the village, she hunts and she fishes and she sleeps beneath the shifting lights of the endless winter night. As if she were a boy earning his manhood. But she is not a boy of the cusp of his destiny; she is a woman, Katara, and she has no idea what her future might hold.

And then, of all people, Aang is the one to find her, to interrupt her solitude. Aang himself is warmth and welcome and home, in a way. Aang truly loves her, even if they had been drifting their separate ways.

Aang asks her to travel to the Fire Nation. Something about internal tensions, Zuko's court resisting the expansion of trade.

Aang watches her eyes as he describes the situation, and Katara knows that he's really talking about Zuko. Zuko is struggling. Zuko needs help.

And Katara wants to blush at the question in his eyes, and then she wants to get angry at Aang, wants to throw something at him.

Because Aang likes to fix things. He wants Zuko's plan to work; he wants the Fire Nation to prosper peacefully. And he wants Katara to be content, which means maybe taking a lover or two.

And then there will be global harmony and Katara will be at peace and will finally be able to join Aang in raising more and more air benders because all of her needs and wishes will have been met.

If she were a few years younger she would dump snow all over his bald head. She knows exactly how he thinks. She can read the quiet hope and the steady assurance all over his face.

But she will go. Not because Aang asked her to, but because moving is easier than staying still. She will travel again to the Fire Nation, not because she's in love with Zuko, but because he's her friend and he needs her help. And because she believes in the work. Maybe not with the passion of Zuko or Aang, but Katara believes in peace. Or maybe she just believes in working toward peace, whatever that means.

She packs up her kit, collects her skins and her fish, and accompanies Aang back home to prepare for her journey.


	11. Chapter 11

It isn't that Katara is in love with Zuko. It's just that when she sees him, she remembers the warmth of his skin when she put her hand to his scar.

She remembers the strength and the grace of his body when he trained or fought or hunted. Even a tautness to him as he slept.

She remembers his determination and his ferocity, against herself or his sister or anyone who stood in his way.

She knows Zuko because she notices Zuko. It's always been this way. Even though she's trusted him for years now, she can't help but pay attention to his every breath and every move.

And of course she wondered... With Zuko and with Jet and with a few others since then, she wondered what it would be like.

Losing control. Being consumed.

Katara sees the heat in Zuko's eyes. She knows that he remembers, too. She's not the only one who's been paying attention.

Zuko watches her with hunger in his eyes and Katara wonders how much longer she can keep pretending that she doesn't notice anything at all.


	12. Chapter 12

Perhaps it was the heat of the Fire Nation. Still early spring but compared to the south, it felt like a thousand summers. Katara wore her silk dresses that felt nothing like clothing but rather streams of indigo water slipping over her skin. It was like living in a steam house, everyone going around half naked but too polite to stare.

Except for Zuko, stiff and formal. Zuko, who seemed cold somehow even with all of his heavy robes.

Zuko who seemed cold all over but for his eyes which were hot and wanting and made something in Katara ache just to glance at them.

Perhaps it was just the heat that had her on edge, the heat and the wisps of silk fabric that always took time to get accustomed to, the way they fluttered and danced and caressed her skin.

When he touched her, it seemed like something inevitable had finally happened, like a breath she had been holding in could finally be let go.

His eyes asked a question, and Katara didn't even take the time to answer.

Heat. He wasn't cold, he was burning, and his clothing was not nearly as stiff or as heavy as it looked. She could feel his muscles under his robes and the silk of his hair and the moist red heat of his mouth.

Perhaps they hesitated for a moment. Of course it was absurd... With their positions, there could be nothing between them.

But since there could be nothing between them, there was really was nothing to stop them.

Suddenly Aang didn't matter, and whatever number of Fire Nation concubines Zuko had waiting for him in the wings of his palace didn't matter.

None of it mattered but the fact that Zuko wanted Katara, and Katara wanted Zuko.


	13. Chapter 13

It came upon her so suddenly... It was like something she had been barely aware of inside of her was unleashed. Nothing like Aang, with whom every movement was intentional and meaningful. This was a maelstrom. Katara could hardly register who was doing what or where they were. She couldn't even think but she could feel it all the way through her. She had become her body, and her body was the ocean, and then she felt that she was covered in dancing blue flames that did not burn and then again she could feel her skin, his teeth, her hands, his body, chaotic and clumsy in their frenzy and then she was gasping for breath and she wanted more and more and more.

They slept, spent, and then woke again even hungrier for each other than before.

Katara wasn't thinking about what it meant. Of course they could be nothing more to each other than what they were.

What they were at the moment was this: Zuko wanted Katara, and Katara wanted Zuko.

What more could they have to worry about?


	14. Chapter 14

At first it's something like elation. Katara has never felt so alive as she feels with Zuko. Just his hand on her thigh fills her with warmth and excitement. It's like bending, like fighting, like sailing, like flying. After they make love she sleeps a heavy sleep and then she rises from his bed energized.

Zuko's eyes never stop tracking her when she is in his presence. He smiles a shy, sly smile, and he seems happy for once, relaxed for once.

Katara smiles back at him.

This is good. This is good for them. They are harming no one, and Katara feels as though they are infusing each other with light.

She is a balm to him; she knows it, and for her, Zuko... Something about the way he loves her, the way he touches her, the way he looks at her. As though he is... amazed. It sends shivers down her spine and she can't imagine what she has been afraid of all these years.

This is just... perfection.

Katara does not think about the past and she does not worry about the future.

She feels a little bit guilty, that the freedom and the peace that Aang tried to share with her through his meditation, his mindfulness, she has found in this... affair, this... abandonment... with Zuko.

Of course she'll never tell Aang that.

And in the meantime she will lavish her love upon Zuko. After all, there's no telling how long they'll have.


	15. Chapter 15

Katara feels as if she can conquer the world. She has Zuko's heart. He smiles at her. He jokes with her. He seduces her. He holds her closely, tenderly. He hasn't slept soundly for years but he does sleep in her arms. Some nights she just watches him, stroking his skin and listening to his steady breathing before she herself drifts into sleep.

Katara feels purposeful, powerful. It tells in her negotiations over clinics and harbors. Fire Nation autocrats who had been resisting her efforts at every turn - suddenly she is laughing with them, flattering them, winning them over to her side. Suddenly she feels as though she herself - not the Avatar's Ambassador or the Fire Lord's lover or even the Painted Lady - she herself, Katara, is accomplishing these things.

She wants Zuko to triumph in her triumph.

But when she must travel again... It's like the tide is sucking all the sand away from under her feet. Rage in his eyes but instead of exploding he just closes in on himself. He shuts her out.

Katara has never been a patient person. She draws him out into a fight as terrible as any they had when they were enemies, and in the end they make love passionately, and in the end she still leaves.

Katara is Katara. She belongs to no one else.

Aang wanted her soul, and Zuko wants her body, to be there with him, to help him sleep, to lend him strength.

Katara is Katara. She belongs to no man.

Zuko does not understand - refuses to understand how she can leave and travel and continue to live her life, now that they have come together.

Katara is baffled and hurt and simmering with rage when she leaves him.

She doesn't notice her own heart bleeding until she is leagues away.


	16. Chapter 16

When Katara returns to him, they ignite. Now she cannot stand near him without aching to touch him. He's like some potent medicine or magic. She craves his presence, his touch.

Of course everyone knows about it. They are discreet as they can be - and Zuko is naturally private almost to a point of absurdity - but Katara is certain that everyone knows.

Zuko says nothing, but he serves seaweed tea at court and he is tearing down halls to build a lake for her chambers and everyone knows. Of course everyone knows.

Every time she steps into the court it's like walking into a furnace of tension and hatred.

Katara chides him for his indiscretion and Zuko, frustratingly, denies everything. They rage at each other and make up again and in the end it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything.

Katara is well accustomed to Fire Nation nobility looking down their noses at her. Honestly she couldn't care less about what those arrogant vultures think about a water peasant bedding their Fire Lord. She does what she has always done - she ignores them.

Katara has heard about the Earth Kingdom princess waiting in the wings. She knows that the intention of various powers is that Zuko should marry her.

Katara knows that Mai was here, for years, and that Mai has gone. Zuko doesn't talk about her much. He bites his lip and furrows his brow while Katara keeps her own silence and presses hard, trying to kneed away the knots in his shoulders and his back.

Katara doesn't care about any of them. She knows all she needs to know, which is that Zuko loves her and craves her. She knows his scowls and his laughter and his peaceful smile. She knows the way he finds excuses to fight with her and then grips her arm tight, frowning, when it is time for her to leave again.

Katara knows that they can't have any more than this.

And Fire Nation politics mean nothing to her.


	17. Chapter 17

They go on, then, ebbing and flowing. Katara lets her work determine when and where she travels. Sometimes she is needed in the Earth Kingdom, sometimes in the North, and sometimes in the Fire Nation.

Perhaps it is because she cannot stay, because she does not stay, that she and Zuko are drawn to each other so fiercely. The more often they come together and then pull apart the more they cling to each other.

Aang frowns at her like a disappointed mother whenever he sees her. This isn't what he had in mind. Katara was supposed to help smooth things down, not stir them up.

Katara knows what he's thinking - she isn't detached enough; she isn't wise enough or generous enough to feel the right thing, say the right thing, do the right thing. She is still too much herself and not who he needs her to be.

Katara feels torn between anger and guilt.

Toph is more diplomatic. She talks and jokes with Katara like old times while her children play around her. She hardly mentions the Fire Nation at all, but Katara can tell that she is worried. Worried about her investments, certainly, and worried about her old companion as well.

Not Katara, of course. Toph is worried about Zuko.

Katara worries about him, too.

She would put an end to this addiction between them - perhaps - probably - if she really felt that it were the right thing to do. But Zuko... He always looks exhausted when she goes to him. He sleeps - not always, but often - he sleeps in her arms. He tells her of his worries, some of them. She knows him well enough to know that he trusts no one else.

To abandon him now would be to abandon him to the fox-vipers that prowl all around him, in his nightmares if nowhere else.

Katara won't do that.

Zuko needs her - he needs her as she is, not as he wishes her to be. And perhaps being needed in that way is what Katara needs.

So it's selfish of her, certainly, to continue this.

But Katara isn't perfect. She never claimed to be.


	18. Chapter 18

Meanwhile the Fire Nation navy has become powerful again. The Earth Kingdom keeps a close watch and matches her innovation for innovation and ship for ship. The Water Tribes have a hand in it and make a profit on it all.

Aang doesn't encourage it, exactly, but he says nothing against it. Perhaps he believes that the more ties there are between the nations the lower the risk of war.

And everyone is making money. After all, they aren't war ships; they carry no weapons. The new navies don't bring soldiers but rather passengers and goods for trade. Even a colony of Air Nomads has gathered on one of the Fire Nation's outlying islands, with a few Fire Nation converts finding their way up the impassable paths.

Katara would worry, perhaps, about the speed with which the world is changing and moving, like the build to an electric charge... But she loves the way that the new ships move with the sea. It makes up for all the time she's been spending in the Fire Nation's parched land.

And then there is the fact that the new sea engine is Sokka's invention.

Sokka frowns at her, too, these days, but that's nothing new.

Sokka frowns out of worry for her, but Sokka also frowns when he's thinking.

Katara brushes him aside when he tries to talk to her about it.

He is her brother. She knows what he will say.

She knows that soon she will have to stop pretending that what is between herself and Zuko can just be theirs, can just be private.

One way or another, she knows that things as they are will have to end.


	19. Chapter 19

Aang speaks so low and so serious with that furrow in his brow and Katara's first impulse is to rage at him.

It's absurd. He's completely lost all sense of proportion. All the Avatar business has gone to his head.

Katara fights for _peace_. The last thing she wants is to start a war.

Aang's just upset because he lost her and because she's found happiness with Zuko and if they could just stay together in some small nest, if they could just get away together, if someone could take the weight of that crown off of his shoulders...

Katara wants to laugh and she wants to cry.

It's horrifying.

It's absurd.

A war.

There could actually be a civil war over her relationship with Zuko.

It has nothing to do with her, really. She would just be the excuse.

Katara knows that. Aang knows it, too.

But Zuko isn't just Zuko anymore. Katara has gotten herself involved with the Fire Lord. She can't keep pretending that that doesn't matter.


	20. Chapter 20

The sensible thing to do would be to step back. She could retreat to the poles for a while. Let him marry his Earth Kingdom princess. Pacify the powers and then eventually, perhaps, she could slip back into his bed. After he had produced a legitimate heir or two. No one would care then if the Fire Lord took a lover.

Katara feels ill at the thought of being shameful and a secret. She may wear disguises at times, but Katara has never been ashamed of who she is.

And Zuko doesn't trust this woman. Zuko would approach a marriage with Kaiza the way he would approach his grave. He would rather die than live through the terror of an assassin in his bed. He already doesn't trust anyone.

Except for her.

Zuko wants Katara.

Katara has seen the desperation in his eyes and she knows that Zuko would risk everything, throw away everything, if it meant that he could keep her.

Perhaps all he's been waiting for has been a chance to risk everything, lose everything he has.

Zuko has his workers building a new pavilion that overlooks the sea. He claims that he just wanted a project, something new. But Katara and everyone else recognizes it for what it is - a declaration.

Aang worries that there will be a war.

Katara feels sick and light-headed.

She is standing one day at the docks outside the palace, when Sokka joins her, looking out at the sea. He speaks quietly.

He says that if there is a war, the Water Tribes will stand by her.

He says that there is more to the ships they've been building than simple navigation.

He says that, if she wants to be the Fire Lady, she will have to become more beloved than the Painted Lady to the people of the Nation.

She must become a goddess to the people of the Nation, and within the walls of the Palace, she must become a demon more terrifying than Azula ever was.

She will have to win the war and then she will have to rule.

Can she do that?

Katara can feel the power in her hands, in her blood, in her heart, in her mind.

She knows that she can.

Perhaps this is what she has been afraid of, what she has been trying to ignore for so long.

Katara is already terrified of what she might become.


	21. Chapter 21

The Fire Nation islands are dry places, except during the monsoon time.

Most of the year they are as dry as the barren tundra.

Katara's tours take her past liquid lava so hot she cannot even feel the flow of it because the water has all boiled out.

The ground is parched beneath her feet. The very air is dry.

It isn't so different from her home. Toward the center the ice is so old and packed together it is as solid as the hardest rock. The air is so cold that it holds no moisture. The only free water is the ocean that surrounds them, the ocean that carried them there.

Her people didn't originate in the Poles. Long ago, as their oldest stories tell, they lived in another place, a warmer and wetter place. There was a war there, invaders, and in order to survive, they fled. Another conflict, another move. And so on and so on, drifting farther and farther until they arrived at the ends of the earth.

The Water Tribe adapts.

They know when to slip away, and they know when to fight.

The Water Tribe holds onto memories for a long time.

Zuko has become quiet, almost sullen. He concentrates on his work. The economy, taxes, the cultural exchange... The Pavilion grows and grows, farther out over the ocean. It's as if he's somehow creating a new island out of the sea itself.

Perhaps Katara has become quiet and sullen as well. She continues to travel around the nation, building clinics, healing the waters.

The common people love her.

They love her and they fear Zuko.

When she and Zuko are together, they hold each other close and shut their eyes.

They breathe together.

Katara can almost feel the fire that rests inside him.

And when she concentrates, she can feel her blood.

She can feel his blood.

There are some streams in the Fire Nation, some rivers, some geysers; hidden boiling ponds and spectacular waterfalls. There is the never distant ocean.

But sometimes the only liquid that Katara can feel is the blood in their bodies.

The Fire Nation doesn't hold much water, but it is full of blood and blood and blood.

Katara has made a home in this place.

She knows her friends.

She knows her enemies.

She knows the weight and the pulse of their blood.


	22. Chapter 22

"If the Fire Nation falters, there will be an invasion," Toph writes to her. "There is nothing we can do to prevent it."

Then the firebombs start exploding in the capital, and nationalist, anti-Zuko organizations start pouring into the panicked streets with their slogans and banners.

The outbreak of civil war energizes Zuko. There is no more time for worrying about whether or not to act. Katara watches as his eyes light up with clarity and confidence they haven't had since his father died. He starts organizing internal and external defenses. Fire brigades, armies, walls.

He spends all day making tactical decisions and wakes before dawn every morning to personally train his elite corps of guards.

The bickering in the court continues as people are dying in the city. Katara returns from healing some of the injured to find arguments about money spent on relief. She offers to strangle some of Zuko's opponents – lightly, just enough to grow dizzy and ill, enough to rethink the wisdom of their positions; not enough to kill them. She is mostly joking.

Zuko smiles at her with a delighted, wicked grin and tells her no. He has other work for her to do.

And so after one last bone-melting night, he sends her out of the capital, out to the wide-ranging estates of the nobility. Out to the coasts.

She will be his eyes, traveling all over the nation.

She can breathe again. She hadn't realized how much she was suffocating under the weight of all the blood pulsing in the palace, throbbing in her temples. Outside the capital she can stretch and move; she can speak again.

No more waiting and worrying.

It has always been easier for her to do battle in the open, in air wet with the scent of the sea.


	23. Chapter 23

The lesser relatives of the nobility are Lords out in the countryside. They control the land and the peasants. They are accustomed to rare visits from the capital, accustomed to having their way over the villages and farms, unopposed.

Rather than the polite lies of the palace, in the countryside no one holds their tongues, least of all Katara. She has no qualms about personally arranging for supplies and defenses. Their aquifers, their dams, their food reserves: Katara takes their measure and forcibly ensures their creation, if she has to. She reviews land and taxation laws and makes sure that the people are better off wherever she visits. She travels with the Fire Lord's seal and her own personal guard to enforce her will.

Meanwhile her guardsmen and women are watching the sea. Sometimes they order walls or canons to be built, and they are watching, watching, watching, the traffic from the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom.

The invasion hasn't begun yet, but it is coming. The trade ships are moments away from turning to war.

Will the invaders be friends or foes?

Katara knows what it feels like to desire revenge.

She sees blue waves rising out of the ocean to crash across the surface of the land.

She feels elated and sick with despair.


	24. Chapter 24

Water tribe ships are massing at every port. Skirmishes have broken out between the nationalists, as they call themselves, and the loyalists who support Zuko. There have been no formal declarations as yet, but it is obvious that the Water Tribe sailors side with Zuko. Banners are cropping up to declare faction affiliation, village by village, town by town, and street by street: Red and orange for the nationalists; red entwined with blue for Zuko and Katara.

The Earth Kingdom seems to be waiting. They want the war to get underway in earnest. They plan to attack at the weakest point and then devour whatever is left.

Katara is midway through her tour, at the farthest island from the capital, when she receives word that Zuko has sealed the walls of the city. He has issued an edict that all commoners may evacuate, but any nobleman who chooses to leave the capital will forfeit his lands in return.

Out of stubbornness, all the nobles remain. Letters full of bitter and wistful death poetry start to flow out of the city.

The palace is bleeding in black ink and scraps of silk. Fitting eulogies for the autumn branches, the setting sun, the fires that more and more frequently are raging through the city.

Katara can envision it, as surely as if she were still standing next to him: Zuko standing tall and strong. The calm and decided confidence in his smile.

Zuko has known all along that he will be killed.

Now he has found a way to take the entire palace down with him.


	25. Chapter 25

She is racing back to the city. More than ever before, Katara misses Appa. After sailing down the coast on a commandeered vessel, she and her guards have secured a pack of mongoose lizards. Their writhing, leaping, heaving movements nauseate her, but it doesn't matter.

She's too late.

She knows before she gets there that she is too late.

Moving toward the capital from the coast, they struggle through roads clogged with refugees pulling carts and hauling bundles.

They hear stories that all contradict each other. The Avatar appeared to destroy the Fire Lord. There was a fire. There was an explosion. The entire palace has sunk into the earth.

The Fire Lord was killed in an explosion while defending the city. His body was burnt. It disappeared. There was a dagger lodged in his throat. The Fire Lord lives and has gone mad.

The Fire Nation has been colonized by the Earth Kingdom. The Lady Katara has seized the throne in the name of the Water Tribe.

They listen to the stories as they press onward, closer, and then they begin to smell the smoke.

There is a haze in the air. The people coming toward them have all wrapped their faces in cloth. Katara and her group start to choke on the dust as they get closer. They tear their own clothes to tie masks around their noses and mouths.

Katara feels her eyes stinging. She is weeping long before they approach what had been the outskirts of the palace.

Now it is rubble and embers and smoke and dust.


	26. Chapter 26

She touches his body.

They saved it for her.

It is like touching a cooked animal.

They could feast on him, on the parts that aren't burnt, if they chose.

His skin is different, its color and its texture and the shape of his flesh. His golden eyes have boiled away.

But the scar is still there.

The scar she never healed.

And a new wound gaping in his neck.

A wound the width of a slim, deadly dagger.

She feels almost elated.

Zuko, you were right!

The Lady Kaiza is gazing at her and Katara expects to see Mai slinking like a shadow from behind her skirts.

The Lady Kaiza is perfectly poised and composed and beautiful.

Her gown is as golden as the sun.

She is watching Katara.

She is watching Katara with cold, narrow eyes.

Eyes like Mai's.

This land is full of ashes.

Embers and ashes and the only other sound beside the whispering wind and the moans of the mourners is of the sea.

Katara can hear waves rustling and murmuring and scraping as they roll onto the shore.

Zuko, you were right.


	27. Chapter 27

Katara is fishing.

It has been nearly a year since she returned to the south pole.

Before she always had to be moving. She was always searching for something. Now she just focuses on living each day.

The line bites into her hands, taught and vibrating, weighted by cold, silver fish still living, still shivering in half-stunned struggle.

Katara's hands are calloused and she does not mind.

After she has hauled in her catch and restrung her line she digs for roots and burrowing animals in the sparse earth.

These are summer days of cold, pale, endless light.

Katara breathes the cold, clear air and she keeps her camp always near the sea.

She doesn't bend very much anymore.

Her power sleeps inside her.

Cold as ash.

His ashes were scattered in the sea.

One day a shape materializes on the horizon. A narrow blue shadow, approaching her.

The shape comes closer while Katara keeps digging for her breakfast. The shape does not appear to be hurried or alarmed.

It is a man wearing a parka. A tall man who walks with the lightness of an air bender and the slow, calm stride of a monk.

When Aang at last stands over her, Katara lays down her spade and offers him a cleaned root to chew.

He visits her often.

They agree that the children will be raised according to Water Tribe ways, at least until they are old enough to decide for themselves.


	28. Epilogue

This is how it goes down in the history books:

There was great confusion following the fall of the Fire Nation capital. The Fire Lord and half of his ministers were dead. The countryside was in chaos, stirred up to rebellion by Water Tribe spies, and many were fearful that the Earth Kingdom as well lay waiting to attack.

In the midst of such calamity, the remaining ministers decided in rare unison to appoint the Fire Lord's widow, Lady Kaiza, as acting sovereign. Being inexperienced and mourning the sudden death of her husband, Lady Kaiza was reluctant to rule. She agreed only on the condition that the ministers and Lords of the land would form an acting council of law-makers who would assist her in governing.

They did so, and with the Avatar's assistance devised a constitution for their new form of government.

Peeling back the more controversial edicts of the Zuko era, Lady Kaiza nonetheless expanded her predecessor's economic policies. Together with her councilors, she brought forth a renewal of traditional Fire Nation arts and culture, tempered by the continuous mingling of goods and people that was inevitable with their ever-expanding trade. Trade benefited the most wealthy, of course, but the growing economy also transformed the lower classes. Gradually, the sharing of powers in the capital city slowly crept into regional representation and governance, due in no small part to the small but frequent local rebellions that arose.

In the end, Lady Kaiza's long reign was seen as an unprecedented time of peace, prosperity, and technological development. It also marked the end of the Fire Nation monarchy. Lady Kaiza left no heirs. Upon her death, full sovereign power passed to the council.

A note on architecture:

The palace complex, which had been mostly destroyed at the end of Zuko's reign, was hastily rebuilt under Kaiza. At the time it was thought that the nation faced more pressing expenses, and so the style of the new buildings was simple and unimaginative.

There was one structure, though, that stood apart. It had been begun under Zuko's reign but was only half-finished when Lady Kaiza attained the throne. Despite protests from her ministers, Lady Kaiza did not tear it down to reclaim its materials. Instead she completed it without altering the design.

One of the many remarkable things about this building is that the foundation could only have been formed by earth, water, and fire benders working together to draw lava from the ocean depths. The stone floor rises in sweeping waves around rare and precious woods that form the pillars. The fluid, rhythmic pacing of the carvings is unlike any other style in the Fire Nation. Seemingly delicate, the pavilion is nonetheless designed and built with integrity to last for centuries in the midst of salt waves. The entire building seems to be balanced in the midst of a slow, gracious movement, standing alone on its own island and solemnly facing the sea.

To this day the structure is still known as the Pavilion of the Water Bender.


End file.
